A patient with narrowed mandibular dental arch following reconstruction of the tongue and the mouth floor was reoperated to expand the mandibular dental arch with iliac bone graft.
After experience of this case, we examined 7 simillar cases concerning their mandibular dental arch. We observed the mandibular dental arch narrowing in only 1 out of the 7 cases. Comparing with 6 remaining cases which showed a normal mandibular dental arch, it was demonstrated that the narrowing of the mandibular dental arch mainly depended on the following factors;
1) Insufficient volume of reconstruction,
2) Atrophy of the reconstructed soft tissue,
3) Whether the mandible had been cut with a saw during operation,
4) Fixation method of the resected ends of the mandible, and 5) Conditions of the remaining teeth and their periodontal tissue.
It was conceivable that among these 5 factors, the unbalanced bucco-lingual pressure which was resulted from decreased reconstructed volume may slay an important role in the mandibular dental arch narrowing after tongue and/or mouth floor resection.
